Trying to Believe
by lookingupatthestars
Summary: When Phil meets their new neighbor from across the hall, he immediately knows that something is wrong. Together, Dan and Phil must figure out the mysteries of their neighbor, and maybe even help her. Things just might be a little darker than they anticipate, however. A whole lot darker. NO SLASH, JUST FRIENDSHIP. TRIGGER WARNINGS IN A/N. OCs PRESENT.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Just a warning, this fic gets sort of dark, especially towards the end. If you're triggered by physical/emotional abuse, eventual physical fighting, swearing, and/or attempted rape/rape mentions, DON'T READ THIS FIC. This is also not intended to be slash at all, just friendship with Dan, Phil, and my OC. That being said, I hope you enjoy this fic, and PLEASE give me feedback on how to improve it. Constructive criticism can only make it better, after all! I own none of these characters, just my OC.**

Chapter 1

Phil yawned and rubbed his eyes. It was getting late, at least for him. Dan would no doubt be up for another few hours on tumblr and would only go to bed when the first rays of light began appearing in the sky. Phil usually went to bed sometime around one, but if he got caught up in editing a video, he could be up all night. Tonight, however, the editing had gone quickly, and it was only half past midnight.

Shutting off his computer, Phil stood up and stretched. The groceries had been delivered yesterday, and he knew for a fact that there was an unopened bag of marshmallows in the pantry. Dan would probably kill him for it, but how could he resist the sugary little clouds of joy?

As he made his way to the kitchen, he listened to the sound of the torrential downpour outside. It was a nasty storm, windy, cold, and very wet. As if to emphasize the gloominess, a rumble of thunder shook the apartment walls. Phil shivered. He didn't fancy to be out in this weather, that's for sure. Maybe he would make some tea to go along with his sugary treat.

After having successfully acquired both the marshmallows and a steaming mug of tea, Phil was just about ready for bed. He set his treats down on the counter and began walking down to the front door. All that was left to do was lock up for the night. Usually he left this job to Dan, as he went to bed later than Phil, but sometimes Dan forgot, and there would probably be some people out on the streets tonight looking for shelter. He really didn't need someone wandering into their apartment at three in the morning.

He hurried down the stairs quickly, looking forward to diving under his warm blankets for the night. The heating had been acting up lately and there was a slight chill in the building, especially tonight with the storm. Phil locked the door and was just turning to head back upstairs when he heard a thump, and a quiet but desperate "Are you kidding me..." coming from the other side of the door. Ordinarily, Phil would ignore it and go to bed, but the person sounded like they were going to cry, and Phil was not the kind of guy to leave someone crying by themselves in a hallway. He turned back around and cracked open the door.

Phil recognized the person standing there, with her head pressed against the opposite door in silent defeat. It was their new neighbor who had moved in a few weeks ago. They hadn't properly introduced themselves, but they passed each other on the stairs occasionally and Phil always made sure to smile at her. She was young, in her early twenties or so, with dark brown hair and striking hazel eyes. She had an average build and unremarkable features. Really, she was almost boring, but Phil believed that no one was truly boring. Besides, one time they had passed each other she had been wearing a Harry Potter sweater. You couldn't be completely boring if you liked Harry Potter.

"You alright there mate?" Phil asked. The girl jumped at his voice and turned to look at him, swiping at her eyes quickly.

"Oh, I'm sorry, everything's fine, I just forgot my keys at my b-boyfriend's place and now I can't get into my apartment."

Phil took in her appearance. Her clothes were dripping wet, her hair was a mess, and her eyes were red and puffy. Basically, she looked like a train wreck.  
"Were you out in the storm?" Phil asked disbelievingly. She gave a jerky nod and wiped her face again. Her hands were shaking, along with the rest of her body.

"Bloody hell, come inside for a minute and get dried up," Phil said, opening the door completely. "You look freezing."

The girl's eyes widened and she took a small step back. "N-no, that's fine, I don't need help. Everything's okay, really."

Phil frowned. He understood why the girl was apprehensive about coming in. It was quite sad, really, to live in a world where being kind to a girl made them think you were a murderer or a rapist.

"Look, I promise, I'm not going to try to kill you with an ax or something. Cross my heart." He made a crisscross motion over his heart to prove it. The girl looked at him, keeping her distance. She still didn't trust him.

"Do you at least have a phone? Can you call someone?" Phil asked. "I want to make sure you aren't stuck in the hall all night, it's freezing."

She shook her head again, her eyes downcast. "No, my phone is inside. I don't have anyone to call anyway."

Phil sighed. "Can I at least get you a towel? You look like you've had a bath with all your clothes on."

The girl stood there for a moment, staring at the wall. Phil wondered if she had even heard what he had said, but at last her head jerked stiffly in a nod.  
A few seconds later and he was back in the hallway, having retrieved a big fluffy towel, and the girl was now trying to pick the lock on her door with her earring. Phil had to admit he was very curious to see if it would work, and he only made his presence known when the girl fumbled with her earring and dropped it on the floor, to which she reacted with a few choice swear words of which Dan would have been proud.

"Hey, here's a towel," Phil said, startling the girl into dropping her earring again. She swore under her breath and wiped her eyes as she picked up the earring again.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Phil asked tentatively.

"I'm _fine_ , it's just been a long day," she said, her hands still shaking as she took the towel and began drying her hair.

Phil wanted to push it further, because it was extremely obvious that she was not okay, but he knew when to stop. "Is your boyfriend at his house? Couldn't you just ring him up and ask him to bring you your keys?"

Something in her eyes became more guarded. "No. He, he left to go to his parents house for the weekend right after I left."

That was one of the flimsiest lies Phil had ever heard, but he let it go. She would just close up even more if he kept pressing her. An awkward silence fell that neither one of them seemed eager to break. Phil fidgeted and the girl kept her eyes downcast, fixed firmly on a slight crack in the wall as she rubbed her hair with vigor.

"What's your name?" Phil asked at last, unable to stand the silence. When he was nervous, he talked, and this was about as tense a situation as it could possibly get. The girl looked up at him, her hazel eyes looking black in the dark hallway.

"Nadia," she said quietly. The hand clutching the towel dropped to her side and she picked at a stray thread absently. "I'm Nadia."

Phil grinned. "Nice to meet you, Nadia. I'm Phil."

The faintest of twitches appeared at the corners of her mouth. "Nice to meet you too, Phil." The black of her eyes changed ever so slightly to a dark chocolatey brown. "I should go, I need to find a hotel or something. It was nice talking to you."

Phil blinked at this sudden change in the conversation. "Do you even have any money? What about a cab? There's not going to be any out tonight in this weather." As if confirming his words, another boom of thunder shook the walls. They both flinched simultaneously.

"What else am I supposed to do then?" Nadia asked, looking at Phil with eyes filled with desperation. In that moment, with her hair hanging around her face in strings, tears and rain mingling on her cheeks, and her defeated posture, she looked terribly young. Phil's mother hen instincts kicked in. There was no way he was going to leave his young neighbor to sleep in the hallway in her wet clothes in the middle of a storm. The thought was appalling.

"Are you sure you won't come in? Just to dry off for a bit?"

Nadia looked to be on the verge of saying yes, but something held her back. "No, I can't. I'm sorry." Her eyes were trained on the floor again.

Phil chewed his lip for a moment. "Hang on just one second." He turned and hurried back into his apartment, calling "Dan? Do you know how to pick a lock?"

Needless to say, Dan was extremely curious to know why Phil had come bursting into his room at one in the morning demanding that he pick a lock, but Phil was offering no explanation other than "It's an emergency, just come quickly." Dan followed Phil, rather warily, to their front door, where he was met with a wide-eyed, dripping wet girl who he vaguely recognized as the person who had moved in a few weeks ago across the hall.

"Dan, this is Nadia. Nadia, this is Dan," Phil said, shoving Dan into the hall. "Dan, pick the lock on her door, will you?"

Dan stared at Phil for a long moment, having one of those very familiar moments he had when dealing with Phil where he just could not comprehend what his friend had said, because the sheer ridiculousness was too much to grasp. "Sorry, _what?_ "

Phil sighed impatiently. "She's locked out and she doesn't have money for a hotel or anything. Can you pick the lock?"

Sometimes Dan wondered if his friend was truly well in the head. "Bloody hell, Phil," he sighed, running his hand through his hair. He glanced at Nadia. She was young, he noticed, younger than he had previously thought she was. Her hair was only half dry and was in massive knots, her clothes were weighing her entire body down with their soaking weight, and her eyes were just shy of hopeless. It was the eyes that did it for Dan. If he wasn't just the biggest sucker for big, sad eyes.

"Give me a minute," he sighed. Honestly, how did he get in these situations? "I'll be right back," he promised, quickly going back inside, only to be back a minute or two later with a few small tools.

"Just to warn you, I very much doubt that these will work," he sighed, choosing two of the tools. "I bought these off of eBay as a gag gift that I never got around to actually giving to anybody." He went over to the lock and began fiddling with it, twisting around the tools and hoping that he might do this through sheer luck, because he honestly had no idea what he was doing. But miraculously, after about five minutes and several muttered swears later, there was an audible click. Dan twisted the handle and the door swung open.

"Oh, thank you," Nadia said, her shoulders sagging in relief. "Thank you so much, I owe you big time."

"Not a problem," Dan said with a grin. "What else are neighbors for other than breaking into each other's apartments in the middle of the night?"

Nadia actually smiled, and a quiet chuckle escaped her lips. "Yeah, I suppose. Thank you again, you have no idea how much I appreciate this. Goodnight Dan, goodnight Phil."

"Night, Nadia," they replied simultaneously. She actually let a real laugh escape before she entered her apartment and closed the door. Dan turned to Phil.  
"Well, that was exciting. I'm going back to bed now." He headed back into the apartment. Phil glanced back at Nadia's door. He still thought something wasn't quite right with her. Something about the whole boyfriend story seemed suspicious. But it was probably nothing. He turned and went into the apartment, closing the door behind him and locking it. His tea was probably ice cold by now, he mused as he headed back towards the kitchen. He'd need to heat it up before finally going to bed.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Here's the second chapter! Sorry for any weird mistakes, my computer has been freaking out lately whenever I try to upload a new chapter and it messes some stuff up. In any case, please enjoy!**

Chapter 2

It was a couple days before either of them saw Nadia again. They resumed their lives as if nothing had changed, because really, nothing significant had happened, and yet something had. Dan now heard Phil go locking up every night now, and he took his time with it, and later Dan would go too, but obviously not because he was watching for Nadia or anything. Phil was a scatter minded person, after all, and he might not lock up properly one night. It was Dan's duty to ensure that a maniac with a baseball bat wouldn't break into their apartment because Phil forgot to lock the door. And if he took a while to stand there and listen at the door, or even poke his head out into the hall for a minute, well, he might as well check that there wasn't a sopping wet, freezing cold neighbor standing out there.

If Dan was perfectly honest with himself, he was actually worried about Nadia. Why had she been out so late in the first place? Why hadn't she gotten a cab home instead of running through the rain? And why did she look so...defeated, he supposed the word was. Phil had explained that she had left her keys at her boyfriend's place and her boyfriend had left for the weekend, but something in his voice had shown that Phil didn't believe it for a second. While Phil could be extremely daft and clueless sometimes, he was remarkably good at reading people. Besides, Dan could sense that Nadia wasn't telling them the truth about, well, basically anything.

Dan could tell that Phil was worried too, but there wasn't really anything to talk about. For all they knew, Nadia had just had a rough day and was now perfectly fine and happy. But something kept nagging in the back of Dan's mind. Nadia had the look in her eyes of someone who had experienced something dark. To be honest, it frightened Dan.

Phil had his own concerns about their young neighbor. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but something was really bothering him about Nadia's reaction to his questions about her boyfriend. Maybe it was nothing, of course, but it wasn't going to leave him alone any time soon.

The next time they saw Nadia was a completely unexpected encounter. It was getting close to Mother's Day, and Dan and Phil had decided to go shopping together to find some chocolate or something for their mums. They had been wandering around the department store for a while, going through the chocolates and Dan snagging a few extra treats for himself, when Phil said in surprise "Isn't that Nadia?"

It was her, standing at the counter with a man next to her. The man was paying for a box of expensive chocolates and was shooting Nadia adoring looks every few seconds, while Nadia stood very stiff and still, a polite smile on her face as she answered a question from the cashier.

"Should we go say hi?" Dan asked quietly.

"Why shouldn't we?"

"I don't know, it's a bit weird." Dan frowned as he studied the man with Nadia. He was tall, probably in his mid-twenties, with black hair and green eyes. He was rather attractive, and he had the air of someone who knew it. He had just slung his arm around her shoulders and gave Nadia a quick squeeze. She just stood there, still politely smiling at the cashier as she bagged up the chocolate. "Do you think that's her boyfriend?"

"Must be," Phil said, also studying the stranger. "Seems like a nice man."

Dan nodded. The man was smiling and joking with the cashier, who was doing a great deal of blushing and giggling.

"Let's go over," Dan decided. "We might as well go say hi at least."

At that moment, Nadia looked right at them. Her eyes widened in recognition, and the polite smile she had been wearing changed into a look akin to panic.  
"Maybe not," Dan muttered.

Nadia s apparent boyfriend seemed to feel her tense up, as he glanced at her and then followed her gaze to the two young men. With a slight frown, he bent over and whispered something in Nadia s ear. She shook her head quickly, plastering on a fake smile and whispering back. The man relaxed and nodded in a friendly manner at Dan and Phil. They hesitantly waved back.

"Something tells me we should leave them alone," Dan muttered. Phil nodded in agreement, and they both moved back towards the candy. Phil glanced back right before they turned a corner, and he met Nadia s eyes for a brief second. Her eyes were dark green in this lighting and they were filled with almost the exact kind of emotion that he had seen that night in the hallway. But then she turned back around and Phil turned the corner.

* * *

The next few weeks passed normally enough. Dan and Phil both made more YouTube videos, worked at Radio One, and spent a lot of time scrolling mindlessly on the internet. They had actually almost forgotten about Nadia after some time had passed.

It was cloudy outside, but the weather was fair, and Dan had felt the need to go to Starbucks and get a diabetes-inducing cup of sugary coffee. Phil was occupied playing Mario Kart, and Dan left their flat to the sound of Phil coming very close to swearing as he was hit with a blue shell and was bumped to sixth place.

Dan wasn t really paying much attention to his surroundings, having walked this way countless times, so when he accidentally ran into the back of someone while checking his Twitter, it took him a second to react.

"Oh, god, I m so sorry," he exclaimed, grabbing the person s arm to keep them from falling over. The person jerked away quickly and spun to face him.  
"Dan?"

"Nadia?"

She blinked in confusion. "Um, hi. What are you doing here?"

"I was going out for coffee. What are you doing?"

"Same thing, actually," she said with a shrug. "Just needed to get out of the house for a little bit, I suppose."

Dan returned her smile. "Care to join me? I could use the company." Nadia looked hesitant for a minute, but she nodded. They continued their walk to the coffee shop.

"So, um, how long have you lived in London?" Dan asked eventually.

"About two and a half years," Nadia answered. "I used to live in Cardiff, but I got a job offer here and couldn t pass it up."

"Really? What s your job?"

Nadia rolled her eyes. "I'm an intern at Google."

Dan raised his eyebrows. "Damn, that s a pretty sweet job. How d you get it?"

"Friend of a friend of a cousin of an acquaintance sort of thing," she said, the corners of her lips tugging up into the slightest grin. "Honestly, I don t even know if I m qualified for the job or not, but it s not like I do much anyway. I just sort of stand there and get the actual important people coffee once in awhile."

Dan grinned. "Do you like your job?" Nadia paused and looked thoughtful.

"Actually, I kind of hate it." Dan snorted with laughter and Nadia s mouth curled upwards a little more.

* * *

They got their coffee and sat down to talk some more. Dan learned a little more about her life, like that she was an only child and her parents lived in Canada.

"They moved there right after I started university. Couldn't wait to get out of the UK, and once I left they jumped at the chance."

"They just left you here by yourself?" Dan said incredulously. He couldn't even fathom the idea of someone s parents moving across the world from them at one of the most important times in their life.

Nadia sighed, taking a gulp of coffee. "They figured I could handle myself just fine on my own. Didn't even tell me they were going until two days before I started school." She snorted a little. "My parents aren't exactly the touchy-feely type. They hugged me, told me good luck, and left. The most abrupt goodbye I've ever had."

"Do you see them a lot?"

"If you call once every two years at Christmas a lot, then yeah," she replied with a wry grin. "Like I said, not the touchy-feely type. Family isn't really their thing, they prefer to just stay inside and not deal with the world. They didn't even go to my grandma's funeral."

"Seriously?" Dan was stunned.

"Technically, she wasn't really my grandma, I suppose. My dad's mom died, and his dad remarried, and then she was the one who died. But yeah, I mean, she's still family. That's just how my family works, I guess." She shrugged and took another sip of coffee. "But I've been more open with you in fifteen minutes than I was with my old roommate at school for four years. Tell me about you."

Dan sighed. He really didn t like talking about himself. "Well, I've lived in London for about four years. I've got a mum, a dad, and a younger brother."

"I've always wanted a younger sibling," Nadia said a bit wistfully. "Suppose it'd get to be a bit of a pain after a while though. Sorry, keep going. Do you have a girlfriend?"

Dan glanced at her cautiously, but she didn't seem like she was asking in the hopes of something. She just seemed genuinely curious. "Nope, haven't found a girl yet who can put up with me for more than five seconds before realizing what a terrible mistake she just made."

Nadia snorted into her coffee. "Ah, trust me, dating is a mess. Best to stay away from it. Where did you go to school?"

Well, that topic had changed fast. "University of Manchester, but I dropped out."

Nadia tilted her head. "How come?"

"I was studying law, and I just couldn't do it anymore," Dan grinned and shook his head. Nadia had made a face the second he had said law.

"God, no wonder, you picked just about the most boring thing in the universe to study. I would have gone mad. So what do you do for a living?"

Damn. He had kind of hoped to avoid this topic. "I make YouTube videos."

Instead of making another face, like he half expected her to, Nadia merely raised her eyebrows in surprise. "Really? That sounds fantastic. Actually, I thought you and Phil looked familiar. Don't you work at Radio One too?" Dan nodded.

"Yeah, me and Phil do shows there once a month."

"Iive probably heard you at some point then. But that's bloody brilliant, making YouTube videos. Takes a lot of creativity, not everyone can do it."

"Thank you," Dan said sincerely. It was one thing to hear it from fans, but it was another thing to hear someone who didn't even watch his videos appreciate what he did. Not everyone understood so easily, shown by the occasional snide comments he stumbled across on his videos. "Do you watch a lot of YouTube?"  
Nadia shook her head. "Hardly ever, actually. I just never have the time. I wish I could do it more, though." She glanced at the time on her phone and her eyes widened. "Bloody hell, I've got to go. I was supposed to be at a meeting at work five minutes ago." She quickly began gathering up her stuff, but then she paused and looked at him. "It was really great talking to you, Dan. Say hi to Phil for me, yeah?"

"Of course. Have fun at your meeting," he replied with a teasing grin.

She rolled her eyes in response and hurried out the door, calling over her shoulder, "See you later, Dan."

Dan settled back in his chair and took a gulp of lukewarm coffee. They really had been talking for a while. He had enjoyed it, getting to know their new neighbor. Something was bothering him though. She had asked about his dating life, but before he had a chance to ask her the same, she had quickly changed the subject. He supposed it was nothing; some people just didn t like to talk about their personal life. After all, he already knew that she had a boyfriend. Maybe she figured he didn't need to know any more. Dan shrugged it off, drank the remainder of his coffee, and left the Starbucks.

 **A/N: Is this too sappy or over dramatic for anyone? Sometimes it kind of feels that way to me. Tell me if I need to tone anything down. Reviews are love!**


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